Our 3rd and final winner of a $50 gift voucher Friday, October 29, 2004:

"[Delete]" was submitted by John Rummage as an entry in our Ghost Stories contest. It is being posted here as a winning entry. Contest entries are NOT part of the Ghost Stories book.

"[Delete]"
by John Rummage

I'm going to die today.

I know it will happen. He said it will. He said that he's going to have his revenge, that he'll do to me exactly what I did-

Okay. Breathe. This is how the problem got started, with incoherent storytelling. Let me start over; begin from the beginning.

I'm a writer. Well, I was, I guess. The trouble was that I wasn't any good. I couldn't get an agent, I couldn't get a decent editor. The only people who thought my stories were good for anything other than kindling were my parents and brother. But all that changed when I met him.

He never told me his name. All he would say when I asked about him was that he once was flesh and now had left flesh behind. He lived in my computer.He would say that living was the wrong word for it. He had impeccable word choice.

I was typing away one day, trying to make it through chapter two of a story about teenagers as a metaphor for young gods when a new word processor opened up. I started up my virus scanner; I knew that if something happened to my computer, I wouldn't be able to afford to fix it. But then the cursor started moving on it's own. It typed out, "I hope you aren't seriously considering subjecting someone to this blatantly pseudo-intellectual tripe." So that was how I met him. He said that he was a ghost. He said that he had discovered how easy modern technology was for him to manipulate. He said he wanted to help.

Those were the glory days. He took everything I had ever written and revised it. It was beautiful. My "walk in the park" became his " comfortable stroll under sunny skies, over grassy knolls, awakening each of the senses to the beauty of the day, one by one." Everyone wanted a piece of me then. People loved my stories. His stories. They were his. They became his the moment I agreed to his help. My name was just on the cover.

I didn't care then though. I was rich and famous. Everyone loved me.

Over the last month though, something happened. He got very quiet and introspective. If I asked, he would just say that he was working on a special project. I didn't know what he meant. I didn't have any stories left to fix. We were to the point of releasing them in a timely fashion. But last night, I found out. All his help for me was just a warm-up. He was building up to his great work. It was buried deep in a subdirectory. It was so... amazing. There just aren't words. I was in tears before I had finished the first page. Nothing short of centuries of study of the English language and all of its nuances could have written this penultimate work of art.

But I knew what was really happening. This was his Unfinished Business. I know how these things work. I've read stories. He would reveal himself to the world, gift them with this masterpiece, and move on to wherever ghosts move on to. I would be discovered as a fraud. Plagiary on the bestseller list! I would never have survived the scandal.

So I erased it. I deleted the file, and every reference I could find to it.

I thought it would make him stay. I thought it would save my career.

He was notably angry. He used all of his art and guile to tell me how he would make me suffer. How I would be paid measure for measure for undoing so much work. He told me in minute detail how he would erase me, bit by bit, just like I had done to him. How I would be forgotten by everyone and would then die the worst death imaginable.

So now I sit here in this cafe, relating to you my tale of woe. I'm terrified. I don't know where he'll begin. With my things, or my money, or my friends, or my stories, or-

My God.

I can't remember my name.

Our second winner of a $50 gift voucher Thursday, October 28, 2004:

Ghost on Tape
by Scott Carter

Ghost on Tape was submitted by Scott Carter as an entry in our Ghost Stories contest. It is being posted here as a winning entry. Contest entries are NOT part of the Ghost Stories book.

I have a problem.

I was always one of those kids who had to know all the secrets. The kid that had to find the Christmas presents in November and my older brother’s playboys, if it was hidden then I had to know all about it. As I got older reading diaries turned into sneaking into abandoned houses, all night spent in graveyards became hanging around the back of funeral homes, and peeking in the window at the neighbor’s daughter…well, you know.

You get my point. I was a snoopy kid who became a snoopy adult. Not that there is anything wrong with that. It’s made me a lot of money. Cost me a lot too, but I figure I have easily broke even.

No, being the kind of guy that gets paid to follow other people around, find out their secrets, that is no problem at all. Honorable profession and all that.

No, my problem began about a week ago. See, lot’s of people know my proclivities, know that peering under rocks is more than just professional. I’m a Fortean buff, you know all that weird stuff that cannot be explained by science. Fish raining out of the sky, bigfoot, grays, all that stuff…and ghosts.

So, anyway, about a week or so ago I get this package. No return address, nothing inside but a video. Label says, in shaky handwriting, “GHOST ON TAPE.” I figure its one of my buddies playing a trick on me or something, I’m expecting some guy in a sheet like Old Man Smithers on Scooby-Doo. So I let it sit on my desk for a few days.

One night as I was leaving I picked it up, figure I would take it home and see what’s what. Figure out who sent it, call them up, have a laugh. Thus my problem.

I go home and put the tape in. Its some blurry night vision camera thing, time and date stamp and all. This gets me interested, looks like maybe a security tape or something. Not the stuff of practical jokes.

The tape plays on for about ten minutes or so. There is an alleyway, a piece of tape flutters at the corner of the screen. Crime scene tape. That’s when I start to get a glimmer of where this place is. Behind a pawnshop down on 18th. About a month ago a guy robbed the place, killing the clerk in the process, only to be gunned down in the alley by police as he tried to get away. The date on the tape would make it about, what?…say three days after that.

Fascinating. That someone would go through the trouble of sending me such a thing I mean, but after a quarter of an hour I am not seeing anything spectacular about it.

That’s when a cat walks through, hunting some unseen rat no doubt. The cat gets about half way across the screen. It stops. Its back arches and all the hair stands up just like in a cartoon. No sound, but from its profile it must be screaming something awful. Then, suddenly it takes off like a shot.

That’s when I see it. A shadow that goes creeping across the oily pavement, spreading like spilled blood.

The shadow flickers, seeming to rise up off the ground.

In a few seconds it is a decidedly human-shaped piece of darkness in the green lines of the night vision film.

It gets brighter and more distinct.

That’s when it seems to twist and turn toward the camera.

Like it knows. Knows someone is watching it. Knows that something is pay attention to it.

Like it’s looking straight at the camera with unseen eyes.

Like it’ looking straight at me.

The shadow like thing seems to expand, filling the whole image.

Everything goes black.

The tape ends.

Whether because that’s all they recorded, or something happened to the camera or what I don’t know.

That’s when my lights started flickering.

Now, I’m not one to be scared. I have seen some freaky stuff in this world, and while that tape might rank in the top ten, it is by no means enough to get me all worked up.

But I’m telling you, I felt like someone was in the room with me.

So, what do I do? I investigate. I get all I can on the guy that died in that alley. Name, birthday, mother’s bra size, you name it I know it. He was wanted in connection with a half dozen killings. Cut their eyes out with scissors. Didn’t like folks looking at him. Last one was in prison, a guard, he used his thumbs. Escaped not long after.

I spent less and less time at home. But I chalked it up to other stuff. Busy, you know.

But when I did come home, things got worse.

Three days after I saw the tape all the pictures in my house were missing the eyes, as if someone had cut them out.

Two days ago I woke up, sure that someone had been sitting on the bed, looking at me. When I put my foot in the place where it had been it was cold, icy cold, like someone had set a bag of dry ice on the bed.

This evening I came home to discover all the knives, all the scissors, every sharp metal object in the house was missing.

For the last few hours something has been scraping around in the attic.

I can’t bring myself to go look nor bring myself to leave.

So I sit here at the kitchen table, working on a laptop, gun at my side.

I should have left when the lights went out an hour ago.

I hear voices, like people arguing far away. I know they are close.

The creaking sound of the ladder to the attic coming down.

I have a problem.

They don’t like us looking at them.

Our first winner of a $50 gift voucher Wednesday, October 27, 2004:

Praying in the Cellar
By Doug Packard

I never did like the wine cellar at my grandfather's house. The house itself was grim and foreboding. The gables of the roof didn't seem right; they were too sharp, like shards of broken glass. The setting sun always had a funny way of reflecting off of the shingles and casting a red glow onto the entry. It had old, thick curtains that kept the entire house dark all the time. Every wall was plastered with crumbly flower-print wallpaper. Every wall, that is, except the stone walls of the wine cellar. Long ago, my great grandfather had painted it a deep, bloody crimson.

As a little boy I could sense something queer about this room. It was always chilly, even in the sweltering heat of August. Stepping into it always produced that strange disoriented feeling. The one where your stomach creeps up an inch in your chest, your heart skips a beat, and your eyes fail to focus for a moment. I would enter, filled with trepidation, as my hair stood on end and I imagined figures in the dark corners of the room. Upon finally lighting up the red room my fear would dissipate slightly, but my mind was not at ease until I crossed the threshold back onto the ground floor. As the years passed, and I grew more cynical of the bogeymen hiding in the darkness, I no longer feared the red room in my grandfather's cellar. My avoidance of the room may have helped to put up the wall of disbelief in my mind.

Last winter my grandfather died. Blizzard after blizzard forced him to stay in the house week after week, unable to get new supplies. The electricity got knocked out during one of these, and his heat broke. I cannot imagine being alone in that dark house, freezing cold, and unable to get any sort of help because the nearest neighbor is a mile away. For some reason I picture him sitting in the dining room shivering, while rays of red sunlight find their way through the slits in the curtains. The country coroner said that after 4 days of living in the cold and dark without food, he simply gave up and died.

The mailman noticed the car in the driveway remained buried in snow, and tried to see if my grandfather was all right. As it turned out, my grandfather was dead in the wine cellar, kneeling on the ground in a praying position. To what strange gods or demons he was pleading, I know not. I know that in the entire house, I did not find one candle that looked like it had been lit during his four last days.

I inherited the house. After his funeral, I put off going to the house and gathering his belongings for months. But in July, the electric company called to say they would be shutting off the power to the house in two days. The next day, I drove out to the house. I didn't arrive until sunset, and the familiar red glow greeted me at the bleak front door. I unlocked the door, and brought in enough boxes to take all the valuables. I started in the upstairs. Then I moved into the downstairs. Finally, as dusk was settling in, I moved down into the cellar.

I was walking down the old wooden steps, feeling the temperature drop slightly as I dropped below the ground. I am not sure what caused this next thing: either their was an old rusty nail poking out of the stairs, which snagged the leg of my pants, or some evil twist of fate decided my days of fearing the wine cellar were not over. Whatever the cause, I tripped and tumbled down the stairs. One would hope a painful experience like this would end quickly, but, alas, time seemed to slow as I fell. I could feel the bones of my lower legs break as they slapped the vile wood. Above all, I could see the door to the red room, the dreaded wine cellar, slowly approaching me it seemed. After a hundred years of falling, I reached the bottom of the staircase. My head must have hit the door to the wine cellar fairly hard because I blacked out.

When I woke up, my legs were screaming with pain and my pant legs were streaked with blood. The walls of the room were red too, and I realized I had somehow made it inside the wine cellar. And the door was closed. My memories of boyhood ventures to this underground tomb flew through my head. My heart raced, my skin tightened, and my hair stood on end. If my legs were not broken and causing me excruciating pain, I am sure they would have gone numb.

I then heard the footsteps begin descending the stairs. A short step, and then a long step. I tried to crawl to the back corner of the room and hide, but this proved too painful, so I just lay as I was. After an eternity of heavy thudding, the steps reached the bottom of the stairs. "Why haven't you gotten the wine yet?" a deep voice croaked. I could do nothing but emit squeals, even louder when I tried not to. Step, drag, step, drag. The approaching creature was just outside the door. Then the door opened very slowly. I only caught a obscured glimpse of a hoary figure, older than time it seemed. The lights went out then. Step, drag, step, drag. The creature came to me in the wine cellar. I felt it touch me, touch my legs. I just screamed.

That was four days ago. I have been praying to any god who can hear me. Praying for relief. But I remain in the darkness, unable to move due to both injury and fear. I still hear something shuffling around the house. I pray for some sort of rescue.

Praying in the Cellar was submitted by Doug Packard as an entry in our Ghost Stories contest. It is being posted here as a winning entry. Contest entries are NOT part of the Ghost Stories book.